Alevo USA, a battery technology firm that in March said it would add 200 jobs as part of a $251 million expansion in Concord, is shutting down.
The company has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, resulting in 290 lost jobs, according to a filing with the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
Alevo USA Inc. and Alevo Manufacturing Inc., located at 2321 Concord Parkway South in Concord, ceased operations on Aug. 18.
According to the filing, 245 employees were to be terminated when the company ceased operations. The remaining 45 employees will lose their jobs no later than Sept. 30.
The company began selling assets immediately after filing for bankruptcy.
“This decision was driven by the formidable challenges of bringing a new technology into commercial production and lacking the financial wherewithal to continue on through repeated manufacturing delays,” said Alevo Chief Financial Officer Peter Heintzleman in a release. “It is a sad day for our dedicated employees and partners, as well as for the promise of Alevo’s technology.”
Alevo, a Swiss-based group of companies, established itself in Concord in 2014 in a converted cigarette factory.
The company hoped to provide innovative energy storage technology, but faced production challenges that could not be met with sufficient funding.
The batteries Alevo was looking to provide to interested companies such as Duke Energy would have increased storage capacity for renewable energies.
Alevo does have one battery, known as a GridBank, operating in Hagerstown, Maryland.
The company had expanded its Concord facility with the help of a $2.6 million Job Development Investment Grant, or JDIG as it’s commonly known.
The Concord site is Alevo’s only facility in the United States where the rechargeable GridBank lithium-ion battery storage system is made. It had 215 full-time employees when the expansion was announced, and new positions were to include engineers, manufacturing jobs and employees to handle maintenance, logistics and supply chain management, among other roles. Compensation for the new positions was to average around $56,327 per year, compared to Cabarrus County’s overall average wage at $37,808 per year,
